[3.7] Essence Drain/Contagion Trickster (the best one)
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Good read as always. My question about the spec is that i seem to have a lot of mana issues. How do people sustain mana without actively seek mana regeneration gear? I need to chain mana pots when i play
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" Glancing at your character, it doesn't seem like you have a way to trigger Arcane Surge. I would swap out Increased Duration in your Contagion setup and replace it with Arcane Surge. That will make a massive difference. You also don't have Weave the Arcane or Patient Reaper yet, both of which are huge for sustain. Whichever you choose, as soon as you get your uber lab done, the problem will largely vanish. Arcane Will is another great all purpose node that will further assist in this regard. |
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I love your guides, do you ever make a PoB for them?
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" I do, but they're usually pretty unwieldy as I mess around with different trees, items, gem setups, etc. I tend to make them for myself, so I leave slots blank if they're just stuff like life/resists/flasks, since I take for granted I'll fill that stuff out. Basically, my PoB isn't in a presentable form. I will upload one as soon as I'm done prettying it up. |
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How do you compare your guide with Ghazzy's one ?
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I started with Ghazzy's guide and respecced to use many of this guide's ideas around level 79. I have not been disappointed. It has smoothed out the play style and seems to be cheaper as well.
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Great guide! Currently I'm running a hybrid between Ghazzys and Ziz's builds.
Couple of questions related to my build. I'm running Perfect Form + Solstice + Devouring Diadem right now. 1) What are your thoughts on Diadem? do you recommend me just switch out my helmet to your end-game variant? 2) Since I'm running Solstice, is getting the 2 curses mandatory? + Despair? 3) What gem do you put into Essence Worm and why do you couple that with MoM? Switching a ring out for it means I probably have to get resist from my helmet or belt. 4) If I get a 6L bow, does that pretty much mean its unnecessary to get 6L on my Perfect Form? In regards to crafting the 6L, what does it mean to annul 5) Is it accurate to say with MoM + EB (From Diadem) + 96% mana reserved, arcane surge is pretty much impossible to cast? If you have any feedback on my current build, would be greatly appreciated! |
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" I haven't checked the PoB from his recently, but from the write-up, most of the major pieces line up (same ascendancy choices and almost the same tree). The biggest differences are his use of Eldritch Battery, usage of Discipline instead of Flesh and Stone, and gearing choices. I also stress AoE more it seems, recommending more AoE nodes, Carcass Jack, Intensify Support, etc. " 1) Diadem is a very viable route. If you use it, you can run Malevolence, Discipline, and Flesh and Stone in it without even needing an Enlighten. I would only do this if I were also wearing Perfect Form like you are, since you wouldn't want to undercut the ES gain from Discipline by spec'ing Acrobatics. You also could run Grace instead of Discipline in a Diadem/QotF combo and spec back into Acro. Basically Malevolence and Flesh and Stone are miles above everything else in terms of value, so there's not as much of a return on investment for using Diadem. You lose the easy ability to proc Arcane Surge on bosses and the -9% to nearby enemies chaos resistance in order to gain a little more ES or evasion. It's almost mandatory for builds that spam spells since you can recover ES faster than mana, but we don't have problems even on only 25% unreserved. 2) Yes. If I had to only run one curse in this setup, it's Despair. Getting the Temp Chains aura is nice, but not if it means losing Despair. 3) Malevolence would go in the Essence Worm since it has the highest mana reservation. You use this combo with MoM because it allows you to build up a much higher unreserved mana pool which buffers HP. You can also use Essence Worm without MoM and without EB in order to run Malevolence, Discipline, and Flesh and Stone. You're basically trading the stats on a ring for Discipline, so that depends on what you can make work with your other gear. 4) Correct. There's only one mandatory 6-link, so you can leave your armor unlinked if you have the bow. Later on, you can do some luxury combos to save gem slots if you end up having a 6-link armor and bow, like putting Contagion - Inc AoE - Intensify - Faster Casting - Arcane Surge - Flame Dash in the armor. That way faster casting supports both contagion and flame dash, and both can trigger arcane surge, and you can level arcane surge a bit more since your skills will cost more mana. Coloring that on a Perfect Form would be a nightmare though. This is all just hyper end-game fun, not necessary for now. In regards to crafting, annul = annulment orb. An item has to be rare in order to use the crafting bench, but we only want one stat on our rare item (+1 to socketed gems). The only process to obtain a one-stat rare is to use annulment orbs to randomly remove affixes. 5) Also correct. With EB, you will only be able to get Arcane Surge through the crafted mod Increased Cast Speed, Chance to gain Arcane Surge on kill. For mapping it won't make a big difference, but it does for bosses. With EB you won't have Arcane Surge for large portions of most boss fights. |
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" How does Blight fit in with this playstyle? |
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" Blight is used only for harder bosses. With a pseudo 5-link Blight through Allelopathy gloves, it does a lot of damage itself and is additive with Essence Drain. Also, with the Spreading Rot jewel, Blight inflicts the Wither debuff, causing enemies to take additional damage. That acts as a "more" multiplier to all your chaos dot damage. So for maps, it's run towards a pack -> contagion -> ED -> keep running. For bosses, it's curse -> ED -> channel Blight on them until they die. |
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